We have recently left the month of love. People everywhere got gifts and there were declarations of love that were spoken to many on February 14th. Some may have even gotten engaged in some special way on this day. What an exciting thing to have happened! What a special memory.

Isn’t it great to be loved and to give love? I know how I feel when someone says they love me. I feel special and important to them. It makes me want to love them better and be as good to them as I can. How about you? We have one who has loved us that can never again be matched. And his love was an active love and it cost him his life. His name is Jesus…Just his name makes me smile…Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

His love brought him down from Heaven, made him walk this earth with no place to call his own. His love moved him in the direction of the cross knowing that he would die for his own. He did not change his mind or his plan. Even when he was beaten, had a crown of thorns pushed down on his head and a heavy cross to bear, he did it, all the while you were on his mind. His love flowed red.

I would like to think that if I had walked the earth when Jesus did that I would not have been apart of the crowd that was crying, “crucify him!” I will never know, but I have in my own ways at different times not lived my life in a way that spoke of my love for him. We are all guilty, aren’t we? Sometimes, we just do the wrong thing. But even in those moments his love is a love that forgives us, restores us and propels us ever onward to our ultimate place, home, and Heaven with him.

I want to love more, do more, be more in this life. I want to love sacrificially like Jesus did. I feel sure that my love will never require my life, but it should require my time and a little sacrifice. Love is not selfish and self-serving, it does not hold grudges. Love, real love forgives and restores and costs us.

Where would we have been without this act of love on Jesus’s part? Hell, would be all we had to look forward to. He is holy, very holy and even on our best day, we fall short, way short. Without his life, his blood that flowed you and I would have no happy ending, no greatest love story of all time.

Scripture speaks of this love that was bruised and bleeding, it tells us of the greatest love story ever told. If you have not read it recently maybe you should. Soak up this sacrificial love that was poured out for you. Bask in the goodness of the Savior and smile and thank him!

Here are a few scriptures to meditate on.

Psalm 136:26 “Give thanks to the God of heaven, for his steadfast love endures forever.”

Zephaniah 3:17 “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

romans 5:8 “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
1 John 3:1 “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.”

1 John 4:9-11 “In this, the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”